#TryPod

Mar 23, 2017

At the time of writing this, a lot of podcasts hosts have asked me to promote
their podcast using the hashtag #TryPod. Instead of writing about each of them,
I’ve prepared a list of podcasts I am currently following.

There are some other sporadic podcasts, like Stack Overflow podcast which I occasionally listen to, but they are rare enough that I haven’t mentioned them explicitly. However, these are the best gateway podcasts, which ought to open you to this whole new realm of entertainment for your ears while the rest of your body does something else (e.g. exercising, doing dishes, ironing, commuting, etc.).

The podcasts are presented in no particular order (actually, according to their last update time on my Podcast player when I wrote this, but that is irrelevant).

Fun-filled and understandable digest of the most important breakthroughs in
science in the past week. The hosts break down the issues well and the
interviews with the scientists are informative. They also read a short
story published in Nature once per month (in episodes called Nature
Futures) which are usually excellent.

They pick up an odd question to answer per week and present insightful
interviews, opinions, and experiments related to the issue. The intro music is
great and Steven Levitt is a very engaging host. The answers are usually
surprising in just the right way to make me think.

It started off as an audiobook/podcast version of Harry Potter and the Methods
of Rationality, features my voice (in episode 86), and is
now narrating another work of rationalist fiction The Metropolis
Man. It started off as an amateur
podcast, but now is very professionally edited and has a vast array of
excellent voices to draw from. I impatiently wait for each episode.

Myke Hurley and CGP Grey, both of whom are in the creative content creation
business (one is a professional podcaster and the other is a YouTube video
creator), but have very different styles of working talk about … well …
their styles of working. It is a nice way for me to have a minute look into
things which I don’t usually think twice about. I’ve started using
ToDoist and Toggl based on their
recommendations.

Very similar to Freakonomics in style and delivery, but more pithy, more
fun-filled, with multiple hosts and more finance based. Delightfully
informative, nonetheless.

Older podcasts

I’ve listened to many podcasts over the past which I don’t follow either
because the subject matter has changed too much or because they have ended, but
I would still heartily recommend them. Most of them have to do with history,
now I notice.

It is the history of Rome. Very well sourced without many opinions thrown in.
The facts are just as interesting as any commentary on them. I stopped
following their reincarnation Revolutions because the topics jumped around a
bit too much and I wasn’t as invested in the some of the revolutions.

This is a fun-filled and opinionated version of history of our entire World,
starting from pre-historic times and then zooming through. I am currently
following it, but it is very sporadic (once per two months, whenever Rob Monaco
gets time) but is great fun when it comes out. The archive is ripe for
listening though.

Again about history of our world, with just enough number of objects to
fascinate me and keep me engaged right through to the modern times. It makes me
feel that humans have certainly come through a lot, but have changed so little.

These are mini-series which give some historical events a deep look. I loved
the analysis and the story-telling aspect of it. These are very well produced
and very cleanly edited. I’ve only listened to the free episodes so far.

This was a gripping tale of investigative reporting in a case which was gripping
and so well produced that it kept me on the edge of my seat for several
episodes at an end. I didn’t know that it was based on a true story when I
started listening and was shocked to find that out. It stings.

Tools

I use Podcast
Addict
for all my listening. It allows me to listen to local podcasts (i.e. audio book
chapters/downloaded streams) and RSS-feed based podcasts alike. I can speed up
the play and can move forward and back easily, set custom downloading options
for different podcasts (e.g. keep only the latest 10 episodes for a podcast
while keep everything for another, etc.).